Dough:

Glaze:

2 egg yolks

1 TBS cream

Preparation

grease the tray with plenty of butter

preheat oven 350 degrees F

Dough:

Mix the softened butter until creamy, then add all ingredients slowly, one after the other and mix in between. At the end add the flour. The dough will become thick and heavy. Knead it until all flour is part of the dough. Work quickly before butter starts melting.

Cool the dough for about 60 minutes.

Then roll out dough until it’s about 1/4 inch thick and cut out cookies in preferred forms, spread out on the prepared buttered baking tray(s) (not too close, they’ll grow a bit in the oven).

Bryn Donovan, writer, optimist and geek, provides us with a fantastic blog post about ‘Sex-Free-Romance’. Thank you so much, Bryn! I love it!

Most readers of my blog know that I write some steamy romance. A few of you even know that in the past year, I got a new job editing “sweet romance,” which is the industry term for romance with no sex at all.
I’ve always enjoyed all kinds of romantic stories and movies as a reader and a viewer, so I don’t find it strange at all to work on both. I’m even in the middle of writing a sweet romance right now.

However, I’ve always known that lots of people, particularly people who haven’t read a romance in twenty years, treat steamy romance writers with derision. They make jokes about the goofy euphemisms romance writers supposedly use for sex organs, although almost all romance writers have discarded these in favor of more direct language.

They also behave as though writers of sexy romance must all be bad writers. Most romance writers are women, and there is some sexism at work here: a discomfort with women authoring sexual content instead of being the object in it.

I’ve known all that for years. What I’ve learned in the past year, though, is that plenty of people also deride sex-free romance.

I have a cover for the first book, even though it’s still not completely edited. But I hope that will soon be done too. Now I know I need help for the next step. After not getting along anymore with my once hired copyright lawyer, I decided to pick a new, trustworthy copyright lawyer who can help me with his knowledge. Easier said than done. Where do I find one? And believe me, I didn’t feel like going through the phone book.

That was when I remembered that I have one of the worldwide most used professional networks available. I was sure it could help me… And it was so easy!

First I used the ‘search’ function on LinkedIn and entered “Copyright lawyer”:

LinkedIn showed me two lawyers AND on top, the hint to ProFinder with the button “Get free proposals”. I wasn’t happy with neither one of the shown lawyers and decided to click the ‘free proposals’-button.

It took me right to

Of course I had to answer a few questions, which I did:

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At the very end, all I had to do was clicking the “Get free proposals” and wait. It didn’t take too long I got a reply from a copyright lawyer in my neighborhood who I contacted back. We chatted, then talked for a bit on the phone – and I’ll visit him soon to complete the documents and agreement between lawyer and client.

I got what I needed. And I’m sure I’ll be using ProFinder again. It’s very easy.

Since 2015, Amazon has been actively trying to stomp out scammers exploiting authors. As I first reported in 2015, foremost among these were fake reviews, but a couple of months ago it upped the ante by filing arbitration complaints against five individuals who it says offered services to KDP author and publishers aimed at helping them manipulate the reading platform for financial gain. Amazon is demanding a combination of injunctive relief, account termination and, in some cases, triple damages.

As Publishers Weekly reports, Amazon alleges that five people used a number of prohibited strategies to manipulate customers reviews and worked to inflate sales and royalties. Amazon essentially charges that a handful of individuals worked to create fake reviews for their books and others’ in addition to attempts to manipulate Amazon systems that count book sales and the royalties paid to authors via its subscription reading service.

…if there’s anything this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler has learned in ten years of producing his wee literary masterpieces is that NUTHIN stands still in the publishing industry for long, whether that be in the realm of the self-publishing tribes, or the mystic corridors of the ‘Large Houses’with stables of contracted authors… like many of us, I’ve dabbled, and more than dabbled at times, with self-publishing eBooks on Auntie Amazon Kindle… with paperback printed copies through the slalom of censorship in the Middle East, involving hand-to-hand combat with head buyers at the major retail book distributors in this part of the WURLD… engaged for a short while with a small publishing house… experimented with an agent arrangement for an equally brief spell… both of these latter experiences ending with amicable partings of the way… comes now the latest foray for Master Gallacher… the beckoning universe of…